To all our international students: we would like to wish you a happy ELSA Day! ELSA Day is organized every year and its aim is to create a unique forum for a discussion on human rights. This year, the Right to Education was chosen as the main topic. Each local group was to organize an event in order to boost the discussion about the topic. We decided to focus on the Finnish school system, especially at the upper secondary level. We visited a local high school and discussed five different questions regarding the right to education from their perspective. Not to forget the global aspect of human rights, we have included two articles that are also in English and therefore available for you as well.

How to overcome obstacles to increase access to education?

Education is a fundamental right of every individual. It should be realised for all children, without discrimination or exclusion, including during emergencies.

The right to education is enshrined in a range of international conventions such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of The Child. While States thus have an obligation to protect, respect, and fulfil the right to education, comprehensive education remains a privilege.

When we talk about tackling poverty and inequality, education matters. The correlation between national income and inclusion in education is evident. Statistics show that for each year of education a child receives beyond primary school, his or her future income increases by 15 per cent.

Improving teacher education, classroom spaces and learning materials are important measures to increase both the quality and access to education. However, the reasons behind children and especially girls continuing to be denied or dropping out of education are closely linked to other aspects of life and society. For instance, sanitation, child protection and sexual and reproductive health have an essential role in increasing especially the girls’ access to education.

Since girls represent one of the largest excluded groups in the world and they face significant barriers to realizing their rights just because they are young and female, Plan International’s strategy is to work with girls so that they can learn, lead, decide and thrive.

Currently, 62 million girls are shut out of education because of discrimination, poverty, emergencies, social power structures and cultural norms. A young girl in South Sudan is three times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than to complete primary education. It is also common that girls miss school during their periods due to lack of facilities or necessary supplies.

Plan works with partners around the world to enable access to quality sexual health services, and to eliminate harmful attitudes and practices such as female genital mutilation, child marriage and early childbearing. We work with parents, traditional and religious leaders and other community members to increasingly adopt knowledge, attitudes and behaviors that value girls equally, condemn child marriage and all violence against girls as well as enable better economic and social support for them.

Plan provides support for both girls and boys to take an active role in challenging the status quo in their communities, through intergenerational dialogues, peer-to peer-support, awareness raising, and engaging in local level advocacy together with, and as part of civil society, leading a social movement for girls.

In recent years, our advocacy efforts have led to the legal age of marriage being raised to 18 years in countries such as Malawi, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The work continues in the communal level so that the formal norms would beat the informal ones.

Our other grassroot measures include supporting sexual and reproductive health (SRH) friendly curriculum. This happens by working closely with regional education bureaus which have the mandate to develop the curriculum in their region.

Furthermore, for instance in Ethiopia, we closely work with health extension workers for mass mobilization to raise awareness of communities on the adolescent SRH services provided by health centers focusing on access and information. Both in Ethiopia and Mozambique we have also started income generating activities for girls and young women to make and sell washable and affordable sanitary pads. Where necessary, we also construct latrines for schools and facilitate water supply.

In Plan’s education projects we have particularly improved the quality of education among ethnic minorities and those who live in remote areas. As part of our work, we have developed new models for intercultural learning and participatory school administration. In recent years, we have improved the schooling opportunities for instance in Cameroon, Laos and Uganda.

Thueam, 11, learning with her friends in a new school classroom in Laos. Credits: Plan International

We also engage in disaster relief. In humanitarian crisis it is important to give children the opportunity to return to a safe daily routine. We organize temporary schools and preschools as well as safe daycare centers for children in refugee camps. For instance, at the Kule refugee camp in Ethiopia Plan has helped thousands of children go to school and preschool.

In addition to development projects and child sponsorship in developing countries, we also work on a national level in Finland. Our global citizenship education in schools and volunteer activities raise awareness on global issues and encourage people in Finland to become responsible global citizens and to take action to support children’s, especially girls’, rights. If you are interested in being part of this work, you are welcome to join our local volunteer group or apply to become a Child Rights’ Ambassador. Child Rights’ Ambassadors conduct participatory lessons in schools, and we recruit new Ambassadors every summer.

The Finnish success story of education is not the same for all

When someone wants to talk about Finland abroad I often end up discussing our educational system. When I did my exchange in Australia a couple of years ago my local friends were often interested in three topics: sauna, snowy winters and how is it to study in “the country of the best educational system in the world”. And being thousands of kilometers far from home I always felt happy to talk about our hyped educational system – without, honestly speaking, knowing too much more about it than going to school as all Finnish people are privileged to do.

I remember very clearly one dinner at our flat. As my Australian friend studied education she was curious about the Finnish system and her possibilities to make her Master’s in Finland. As many times before, I proudly expressed the story of the country where, in principle, every child has the right to free, high-quality primary and secondary education. And, as a cherry on top, I added that students do not even need to pay tuition fees when studying in the universities.

TUITION FEES PUT THE STUDENTS IN AN UNEQUAL POSITION

Unfortunately, if my Australian flat mate would ask me about her possibilities to study in Finland now, my story would have ended up differently. Since August 2017 Finnish universities and universities of applied sciences are obliged to impose tuition fees for the students coming outside of the European Union (EU) or the European Economic Area (EEA) admitted to a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree programs. The Section ten of the Universities Act (in Finnish yliopistolaki, 558/2009) requires universities to set the minimum of the tuition fee at 1 500 euros per academic year. In reality the fees are higher: for instance, at the University of Turku the tuition fees vary from 8 000 euros to 16 000 euros. Although 30% of students receive some kind of scholarship to cover the fees it cannot be stated that the higher education is equally accessible to all on the basis of capacity, as it is enacted in the Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Civil and Social Rights, which has been ratified by Finland in 1975.

The implementation of the tuition fees was justified by the need for funding for higher education institutions and possibilities to start to export our so-called success story, education. However, although it’s widely understood that Finland needs more highly educated talents, the number of students from outside of the European Union and European Economic Area has dropped in 2017 and 2018. The administrative staff of the university complains about the huge workload resulted from the system. And, finally, there are stories of families that have spent their savings on enabling their child to study here. Some have even taken enormous loans – the reality that is hard to understand for a Finn studying at a Finnish university. These stories were told by students in the seminar organised by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture in mid-November. They did not come as a surprise for me: I have heard similar stories from students at the University of Turku.

ELSA DAY AS DISCUSSION POINT ALL OVER THE EUROPE

It is clear that the tuition fees exposed for the certain group set students in an unequal position. I hope the ELSA Day provokes discussion on free and equal education not only in primary and secondary level but also in the institutions of higher education. The day for free education takes place in Finland on the 30th of November. I hope our success story will one day have the same, happy, ending for all university students in Finland.